Last weekend, London authorities let more than 500 ravers party at a Citicape site in Central London undisturbed for over 36 hours. The police instead gathered outside the venue of to marshal people away as they left, at around midday on Sunday (ain’t that a pure rave appreciation).
The venue was equipped with soundsystems set up on the spot of action, reported as “incredibly powerful”. Great prep. And even though officers were called to the rave past midnight, organised on Citicape building near Holborn Viaduct, they decided not to shut down the party. “If you go in to forcibly remove people then it can be too dangerous with numbers of that size.” – was stated by the authorities. Doesn’t that just sound like the rave of the year?
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Moreover the venue is claimed as a possibly a backup venue already, after clearing out over 150 people on the first site.A brief statement by the authorities claimed:
“We had shut down the main rave earlier so officers had been deployed there, but as is often the case with these raves, the organisers have a number of locations to fall back to. Most of the time people don’t know where it is until minutes before, so it is very hard to act fast enough to prevent them from occurring, which can only happen if you get there ahead of time. If you have more than 500 people inside, then you have to make a judgment call about how to proceed – it is a balancing act taking into consideration the safety of people inside.”
If this would not be free and illegal, this would sound like a well-organised weekend overnight festival guarded by the state police. Still, a case like this should not be viewed as Ravers 1 – Authorites 0, but rather as both a considerate move by the authorities and another great story in the history of rave culture.
Here’s some footage from the good old days of UK rave:
Source: Standard
